Novice - ripping blu-ray and HD DVDs to hard drive.. what format..

vob files are the segmented video containers used by DVD discs to hold MPEG-2 video streams, they are not something you rip to unless you have a player which understands that a VIDEO_TS folder is a DVD and can play that folder of vob files. m2ts and BDMV folders are the Blu-ray equivalent but hold MPEG-2, VC-1 or H.264 video at HD bitrates.

ISO are disc images, more or less the same as the above but easier to manage as even some player which do support VIDEO_TS/BDMV do not always guess correctly and play the folder whereas they know an ISO is a disc image.

You definitely do not want to rip to vob/m2ts for a tablet or phone.

The most compatible modern video format is H.264 video in the MP4 (also can be M4V) container, this container also supports Dolby 5.1 audio though not all devices will support that DD 5.1 track but newer devices should.

So for video conversion get the free Handbrake if you want high quality encodes of your movies. Feed it the VIDEO_TS/BDMV folder (AnyDVD-HD recommend as decrypt-er) and pick normal or high profile (better quality) then on the audio tab, pick the DD5.1 track and set the codec to AC3passthru, if no DD5.1 then select AC3 encode to get DD 5.1

If you want something simpler than that check out DVDFab it does decrypt and conversion.

Hi. I'm still new to this too so I wouldn't try to advise you about the best solution for your setup, however for me I've been getting good results so far using DVDFab and AnyDVD (both still in trial) to rip to folders and then using Handbrake to convert to H.264 MKV. I prefer MKV because I like the support for DTS and I don't have any Apple devices that won't play it. Basically what I've learned so far though is that you want to start by knowing what format / container combos will play back on the devices you're using because once you know that and can settle on a single (or a few) profiles for what you want to save, then what can seem like a very confusing, multi-step process can start can start to simplify very quickly. For me it's been:

1) Rip to folders with DVDFab or AnyDVD (MakeMKV also worked for me to start with but then mysteriously started crashing my laptop so I stopped using it)
2) Convert to H.264 MKV using Handbrake or VidCoder (VidCoder uses Handbrake as it's encoding engine and is basically the same thing, although you might find its GUI a little simpler and easier to use)
3) If I want to then author a file to a blu ray or DVD that can play back to any standard player, I use AVCHDCoder to author and save to ISO. (AVCHDCoder is a nice tool because it has a bit rate calculator that will let you set it to utilize all available space on the disk and maximize the quality). And then finally
4) burn the ISO to disk using ImgBurn (note: if you don't care about creating disks that will play in any player and you just want data disks for backup then you don't need to bother with step 3 since ImgBurn can burn the file directly to disk instead)

My other basic tip is to always keep in mind that encoding video pushes your computer probably a lot more than anything else you'll do with it. So don't get frustrated or look for shortcuts to long encode times (if they're fast they're bound to be low quality) and don't ever try to run more than 1 encode on your computer at a time. Handbrake and VidCoder (and I'm sure other tools like it) all have a queue function that allows you to line up your encoding jobs which you can leave running overnight or when you're at work. Beyond that it's all really just trial and error to find out what works best for you. Good luck!

If you want to keep the original quality then honestly just go with MakeMKV. This will create a single mkv file for your DVDs and Blu-rays. It is also currently free while in beta.

However, I see you mentioned about possibly using your Blu-ray player to play back. Keep in mind that typically Blu-ray players are severely hampered in the formats that they support, and they also have Cinavia which will block playback on certain movie titles.

If you want to encode your files to an m4v format (mobile friendly) use Handbrake. Just keep in mind this is a CPU intensive process, so depending on your PC it could take a while for each movie. Also, because you are encoding you will suffer some quality loss (the amount of loss all depends on the settings you choose).

Good point. This is why I was saying he should start off by finding out what format/containers his devices will play back. I do playback through my blu ray player also (an LG BD690) and although it's fine with H.264 MKV it won't play back any other format as MKV. So MakeMKV worked as a 1 stop solution for some of my blu rays but all DVD rips (MPEG-2) and blu rays in other formats (M2TS or VC-1) I would still have to use Handbrake to convert them anyway. Plus there's the issue of file size. I haven't figured this out yet myself but for example, my rip of my Shutter Island blu ray using MakeMKV saved as something like a 28 or 29GB file for the main movie only while running it through Handbrake reduced it to barely over 5GB with no noticeable reduction in quality (to my eyes anyway). Not sure how that happened since the movie was in MPEG-4 AVC to begin with which I thought was the same thing as H.264? Anyway, between that and finding I still had to use Handbrake on most rips anyway I just decided to make it my default to rip to use DVDFab or AnyDVD (still haven't decided between them) to rip to folders and then convert everything to H264 MKV.

As for Cinavia, that hasn't been put on my player yet and I'm being careful to find out about all firmware updates first before I accidentally install it. Not sure if that means that I won't be able to play disks with Cinavia on them, I just know I don't want it. Beyond that I still need to do some more reading to find out exactly what it is.

As far as filesize once you use Handbrake it encodes the file down. It has nothing to do with the video codec. The resulting file size will be dependent on the variables/profile use within handbrake. Either way there will be quality loss. Whether or not you notice is is really dependent on your viewing setup, TV size, profile used, etc...

An mkv is nothing more then a container that houses the audio and video codecs. It could be H264, VC1, etc... depending on the source. If any encoding is being done then odds are it will be an h264 mkv

Best bet, pick one movie and encode several times (using different settings) so you can gauge the difference (file size, picture quality, etc...). I don't usually lock in a bitrate but instead go with the CQ option (Constant Quality) set around 20. I think I usually bump to the audio bitrate to 320 kbps

There is software that will convert your files to DVD Compliant files for burning (can't remember which one I used but it worked converting an MKV to a DVD structure for burning)

As far as a tablet, it depends on which tablet. If you are using iOS you will want to go with an mp4 file as that is pretty much the only one it recognizes (unless you jailbreak the tablet, then you can play back other formats). With an Android tablet you can play back a variety of formats (mp4, mkv, avi, etc...)

As far as vob vs mkv vs mp4 keep in mind that these are just containers for the video and audio codecs, they have no bearings on the quality. The quality is determined by what settings you choose when switching from one container to another. You can easily go from a DVD to an mkv with exact 1:1 quality, but you can also go from a DVD to mkv but encode which will result in some loss in quality (once again all dependent on your setup, settings chosen, your eyes, etc...)

WitsBusa, just to piggyback on dbone's comment here, if you're going to convert to H264 MKV I'd encourage you to use a Constant Quality option also with a variable bit rate. I've never used aiseeoft but I assume it will let you choose those settings and if it doesn't then I'd suggest experimenting with it to rip your movie to a folder and then run it through Handbrake or Vidcoder where you do have those options. It's a lot easier than trying to figure out what you want the bit rate to be and once you find a setting your happy with you can save it as a profile and then start using it for all of your rips going forward instead of feeling like you have to reinvent the wheel each time. For me, I started from the default high profile setting and after a little experimentation set my CQ to 21 for blu rays and 19 for DVDs and chose auto passthrough for the audio setting and everything I've saved so far with those settings has come out practically indistinguishable from the original disk.

Basically the CQ and variable bit rate settings are there so folks like us don't have to figure out different bit rate settings for different kinds of movies. So they are pretty essential tools if you're tying to keep things as simple as possible.

Thanks dbone. I expected Handbrake to shrink the file size some due to variable bit rate and some of the other settings I have selected. It's just that from ~28GB to just over 5 was a lot more than I expected. Maybe there's more quality loss there than had struck me initially. I've only watched about 5 minutes of the resulting file so far to test it and I don't have the world's biggest TV (a 40" that I watch from about 8' away). So maybe I need to give it a longer screening to test it again.

It gets to that question though of where to draw the line between quality and file size. Before I started ripping any of my movies I had read a lot on forums like these and had convinced myself that I wanted to keep all of them in their native formats as much as possible and not shrink anything. But when my player's limitations conspired against that and I started converting to H264 out of necessity I turned around completely on that. Especially when you start shopping for a real NAS and figuring out what that costs and how quickly you could fill it up if you really want to be a purist like that. I still respect people who take that approach but for me it just doesn't make sense. Not now anyway. Maybe after I've been doing this a while I'll start to develop a better eye and will start noticing quality loss that's not apparant to me now.

Dbone would probably be better to answer this question than me since I've only ever used the CQ settings but my understanding of saving by bit rate instead is that you can't set the bit rates too high if all you care about is quality (unless you're setting it beyond the ability of your player to play the file at all which you'd probably have to expirement to see on that). The tradeoff you're making when you set the bit rates higher than necessary is that you wind up with a file that's way bigger than it needs to be without any noticeable difference in quality.

Check out Handbrake's page on CQ vs. average bit rate since maybe this will help to explain it -- https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/ConstantQuality